ANY society that prioritises ignorance will fail to live up to its potential.That was the crux of Damola Awoyokun's piece "The Next Einstein and the Expressway Churches" published in The Guardian of May 22.In contemporary
Nigeria, the miracle-hawking Pentecostal churches are the bastions of the crude
tendency to ignorance. For them, God is Mr. Fix-It-All who will descend in full
glory to solve all our personal and national problems. Consequently, diseases
are cured not by demanding for a well-equipped public health care system and
functioning research laboratories but by prayers. Accidents are prevented not
by good motorways, effective traffic policing, and sane road habits but by
prayers. Examinations are passed not by diligent study but by praying.
Armed robbery attacks are foiled not by a revamped police force and the
provision of enough jobs for the unemployed but with prayers. What these
churches find primary is being dabbed on the head with anointing oil by pastors
speaking with false American accents, with each pastor clad in a designer suit
and wearing a gold wristwatch that costs more than the average monthly income
of his impoverished congregation. Seek ye first the anointing oil of a
prosperity preacher and every other thing shall be added: this is the
prevailing creed.
Mention must also be made of how these establishments encourage corruption by
placing the tags of miracles on suddenly-acquired wealth. Questions are not
asked about the provenance of the riches, as evidenced by the recent case of an
employee who looted money from the coffers of his workplace, an upscale hotel
in Victoria Island, and donated it to one of the more visible miracle churches
in Lagos. The only thing that matters is the paying of one's tithe, even from
fraudulent funds. Obviously, when a delusion afflicts a sizable chunk of the
population, people tend to forget it is a psychosis and they begin calling it a
religion. A delusion though remains a delusion even when championed by millions
of believers. Remember: the fact that millions once believed the earth was flat
did not make it less spherical.
Regrettably, Jude Fashagba's piece "Einstein and the People of Faith"
published in The Guardian on Sunday of June 1 failed to engage with these
relevant issues. Rather than writing a worthwhile response to Mr. Awoyokun's
submission, Mr. Fashagba preoccupied himself with stringing together
disconnected and evasive sentences. Resorting to such a stratagem is the only
option when one has a bad product to sell, and there are few products less
marketable than Mr. Fashagba's pitch that science and faith are not
oppositional. Science foregrounds observable evidence as it is basis for
understanding the world; faith, in contrast, privileges the unquestioning
adherence to a body of received claims even when unsupported by evidence.
A committee of the National Academy of Sciences recently said "the goal of
science is to seek naturalistic explanations for phenomena... within the
operational rule of testability" while St. Paul wrote in the Book of
Hebrews that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the certainty
of things not seen." Anyone who fails to see a fundamental difference in
both approaches needs to get himself a better education. Science is a
continuous process of empirical inquiry, not a static body of knowledge. That
is why there is something known as the scientific method. Science does not fear
change because its method is served, not compromised, by new insights;
religion, on the other hand, finds nothing more frightening than new ways of
thinking which it labels heresy. Those who revised Dalton's atomic theory were not
burnt at the stake by scientists; prelates of the medieval Church murdered
Giordano Bruno for querying the validity of their theology. It is because of
this open-mindedness that science has explained and predicted the universe
better than any religion and, despite the lamentations of people like Mr.
Fashagba, will continue to do so.
Since Jude Fashagba is a staunch believer in miracles, he could consider it a
major miracle that his write-up did not choke on the barrage of its
diversionary questions. The Bible teacher wondered if Albert Einstein was the
atheist he was "painted" to be. It is on record that Einstein
considered all religions to be childish superstitions. The scientist wrote:
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of
human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive
legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how
subtle can change this."
Attempting to exhaustively answer Jude Fashagba's avalanche of questions would
only succeed in dignifying his pathetic red herrings. He could spend his time
more profitably in researching answers to his endless questions rather than
indulging in the voyeuristic sport of "googling" out Mr. Awoyokun's
name on the internet. And what connection does a person's accomplishment have
with the validity of his or her statements? It is instructive to remember the
case of James D. Watson, a Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, who was fired from
his prestigious position in 2007 after making racist statements that lacked any
scientific backing about the intelligence of black people. Perceptive human
beings know how to separate a person from the validity of his or her
assertions. Clearly, Mr. Fashagba is not so discerning.
At this juncture in our national life when Nigeria is troubled by a myriad of
social and economic problems, what the citizens need is clear-sighted reasoning
and not mystical abracadabras. In the decades during which religious fervour
has gained ascendancy in Nigeria, it has become obvious that blind faith is
creating more problems rather than solving the ones on ground. Witness the
routine traffic hell caused on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway by the Pentecostal
business centres situated along the route. And the ongoing case of Pastor King.
And the Miss World and the Danish cartoon riots. And many other cases too
numerous to list. Religions do not encourage reasoning; instead they promote
rationalisation, something entirely different.
This was why St. Augustine, a prominent theologian of the Church, said: "I
believe so that I can understand." Blind faith comes first and then
justifications for it follow. For the centuries Europe followed that precept,
its citizens were locked in the Dark Ages, and only when the Renaissance
ruptured that dogmatic mode did Europe begin making intellectual progress. In
the liberal era of Averroes, Al-Razi, and Avicenna, learning was far more
advanced in the Islamic world than in the West; not until religious suffocation
came in the wake of Al-Ghazali's attacks on rationalism did that civilisation
fall way behind. The fate of the forerunner who tumbled into a pit should
suffice to instruct those coming behind, says an African proverb. In relation
to the matter at hand, one can only hope it does.
Jude Fashagba should be advocating the entrenchment of a logical and evidential
attitude in the decision making process of Nigerians, both in our personal and
public lives, not the opposite. We are bored with seeing political figures
consecrated in public by religious leaders, only for us to watch in horror as
these public officers go ahead to spend eight years looting the treasuries and
committing atrocious human rights abuses.
Mr. Fashagba is also an architect. I hope he does not believe that the epidemic
of collapsed buildings in Lagos was caused by the machinations of evil spirits.
If he does, it will be of great relief to all if he restricts himself to
designing his personal residence and to his other profession of Bible teaching.
In his second calling, he could promise his congregation a thousand miracles
and deliver zero. None of his credulous flock would find it necessary to bring
him to book.
.Babatunde's latest play was commissioned by Riksteatern (Sweden's National
Theatre), Stockholm
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